Foxborough, Mass.—For bona fide football nerds—the ones who sprinkle terms like "cover zero" into polite conversation and stay in on Friday nights to read the collected works of Bill Walsh—Sunday was a day for the ages.

On one side of the weekend's marquee matchup was Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots, the reigning consensus "genius" of coaching strategy in professional football. On the other was Jimmy Graham, the freakishly talented tight end supremo from the New Orleans Saints, whose size and sure-handedness has helped his team shred defenses with a level of creativity rarely seen at any level of football.

For blackboard geeks, this was Garry Kasparov taking on Deep Blue, if only Deep Blue was wearing an old sweatshirt with the sleeves hacked off.

The game itself was a classic. The Patriots won 30-27 on a last-minute drive. But the outcome, exciting as it was, paled in comparison to a development that all but the most football-savvy fans missed: The Patriots seem to have figured out how to solve the NFL's tight-end problem.

By way of background: In recent years, many of the NFL's top offenses (the Patriots included) have made off with all sorts of riches by creating a new class of pass-catchers. These tight ends aren't just incredibly tall (think 6 feet 5) and only a step slower than a wide receiver; they also have unnaturally big hands that allow them to haul in anything thrown their way.

Teams that try to run "normal" NFL defenses against them used to respond the traditional way. They'd put their top cornerback on the offense's top wide receiver, their second-best cornerback on the No. 2 receiver, etc. As a result, these tight ends would be left to whatever linebacker or safety had shown up late for film study. And with a slower, smaller human guarding a physical freak like Graham, bad things happen.

The week before this Patriots game, Graham destroyed Bears linebacker Lance Briggs in coverage, catching three passes for 40 yards against him. Against Miami he caught a 19-yard pass against linebacker Dannell Ellerbe. After four straight 100-yard games, there was buzz that Graham was the best offensive weapon in the sport.

But then came Sunday's New England game and one of the most shocking reversals of fortune in the history of football. Graham's line: zero catches for zero yards. According to Stats LLC, no player on record has broken up a streak of four or more 100-yard games with a doughnut.

"We didn't want to play him how some teams play him, other teams," said New England defensive back Devin McCourty. "When coach Belichick and Matty [Patricia, defensive coordinator], when they've got a guy to stop, they are going to do different things to slow him down. That's what we did."

The "different things" McCourty refers to is basically a seismic shift in the Patriots defense. They had a secret weapon in 27-year-old Aqib Talib, last seen shutting down elite wide receivers such as the Atlanta Falcons' Julio Jones. According to Patriots cornerback Kyle Arrington, Talib was chosen as the Graham stopper because coaches knew he had some unique characteristics, namely long limbs that could mitigate Graham's four-inch height advantage.

And so, the Patriots lined Talib up with Graham in one-on-one coverage for much of the game as if he were a great wide receiver, not a hulking tight end. The result? Graham became the second player this season to be thrown at least six times and catch zero passes.

The first attempt of the game to Graham saw him spread out wide, like a receiver, to the left of Saints quarterback Drew Brees, with two running backs in the backfield and one wide receiver lined up inside of Graham, near where you'd expect a tight end to line up. The Saints' plan was clear—to get a linebacker to cover one of their speedsters. Instead, the Patriots went the other way and played almost no linebackers the entire game. With cornerbacks on all of their receivers in single coverage (something most quarterbacks love), Brees was baited into the Graham-Talib battle. Talib simply used his long arms to simply poke the ball out as it was thrown.

This isn't all good news for the Patriots, of course. Providing the blueprint to stop a supercharged tight end doesn't bode well for the future of their own tight end, Rob Gronkowski, who is returning from injury. Gronkowski equally feasts on safeties and linebackers with a tight end-centric scheme Belichick helped invent. Belichick wrote the destruction of his own strategy on Sunday.

This destructive strategy continued all afternoon, despite New Orleans' experimentation to get Graham a mismatch. On the fourth pass intended for Graham, in the second quarter, Graham lined up next to Brees in shotgun formation as a sort of fullback. He was practically begging for a linebacker to cover him, since no cornerback in the history of organized sports has ever covered a slow, prodding fullback. This was basically a terrible rope-a-dope strategy. Graham, fooling no one, ran to the line of scrimmage before the snap. By the time the pass was headed for Graham, he was draped by three defenders. Predictably, the pass into triple coverage failed.

"We changed a lot of the game plan but we just had a lot of faith in the coaches that they knew what they were doing," said cornerback Alfonzo Dennard, who smiled when asked if he thought the strategy wouldn't work. "It worked out well."

the offensive and defensive schemes are constantly adapting and evolving. Rather than try that much harder to get their TE open, Saints would be better off exploiting the lack of linebackers. Possibly shift to more run plays, with blocking schemes to take advantage of weak secondary run defense. Planned QB delay-scramble up the middle. Running back moves higher in the checkdown rotation for short completions opened up by the defense focusing extra manpower on the TE. The article closes with a play that showed the TE in triple coverage - that leaves somebody uncovered somewhere so take advantage of it.

Brees seemed to want to force the ball to Graham too much. He did not move away from Graham quickly enough. When Talib was hurt in the 3rd quarter (not mentioned in the article) Brees never really went back to Graham (who was limping off at one point but came back in the game). As a Pats fan, the game was about the NE D stopping NO late (trying to run the clock out without passing) and I think Brees had an off game.

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